The conflict, though sharp and hot, considering the insignificant number
of combatants on either side, was of no very long duration, the whole
time, from the appearance of the Kentuckians until the flight, scarce
exceeding half an hour. But the pursuit, which the victors immediately
commenced, lasted a much longer space; and it was more than an hour,--an
age of suspense and suffering to the soldier,--before the sound of
whooping on the hill apprised him of their return. They brought with
them, as trophies of success two horses, on each of which sat three or
four different Indians, as many indeed as could get upon the animal's
back, where they clung together, shouting, laughing, and otherwise
diverting themselves, more like joyous schoolboys than stern warriors who
had just fought and won a bloody, battle.
But this semblance of mirth and good humour lasted no longer than while
the savages were riding from the hill-top to the battle-ground, which
having reached, they sprang upon the ground, and running wildly about,
uttered several cries of the most mournful character, laments, as Roland
supposed, over the bodies of their fallen companions.
But if such was their sorrow while looking-upon their own dead, the sight
of their lifeless foemen--of whom two, besides the negro Emperor, who had
been tomahawked the moment after he fell, had been unhappily left lying
on the field--soon changed it into a fiercer passion. The wail became
a yell of fury, loud and frightful; and Roland could see them gathering
around each corpse, striking the senseless clay repeatedly with their
knives and hatchets, each seeking to surpass his fellow in the savage
work of mutilation. Such is the red man of America, whom courage, an
attribute of all lovers of blood, whether man or animal; misfortune, the
destiny, in every quarter of the globe, of every barbarous race, which
contact with, a civilised one cannot civilise; and the dreams of poets
and sentimentalists have invested with a character wholly incompatible
with his condition. Individual virtues may be, and indeed frequently are,
found among men in a natural state; but honour, justice, and generosity,
as characteristics of the mass, are refinements belonging only to an
advanced stage of civilisation.
In the midst of this barbarous display of unsatisfied rage, several of
the savages approached the unfortunate Roland, and among them the old
Piankeshaw, who, flourishing his hatchet, already clotted with blood, and
looking more like a demon than a human being, made an effort to dash out
the soldier's brains; in which, however, he was restrained by two younger
savages, who caught him in their arms, and muttered somewhat in their own
tongue, which mollified his wrath in a moment causing him to burst into a
roar of obstreperous laughter. "Ees,--good!" he cried, grinning with
apparent benevolence and friendship over the helpless youth: "no hurt
Long-knife; take him Piankeshaw nation; make good friend squaw,
papoose--all brudders, Long-knife." With these expressions, of the
purport of which Roland could understand but little, he left him,
retiring with the rest, as Roland soon saw, to conceal or bury the bodies
of his slain comrades, which were borne in the arms of the survivors to
the bottom of the hill, and there, carefully and in silence, deposited
among thickets, or in crannies of the rock.
This ceremony completed, Roland was again visited by his Piankeshaw
friend, and the two young warriors who had saved his life before, and
were perhaps still fearful of trusting it entirely to the tender mercies
of the senior. It was fortunate for Roland that he was thus attended; for
the old warrior had no sooner approached him than he began to weep and
groan, uttering an harangue, which although addressed, as it seemed,
entirely to the prostrate captive, was in the Indian tongue, and
therefore wholly wasted upon his ears. Nevertheless, he could perceive
that the Indian was relating something that weighed very heavily upon his
mind, that he was warming with the subject, and even working himself up
into a passion; and, indeed, he had not spoken very long before his
visage changed from grief to wrath, and from wrath to the extreme of
fury, in which he began to handle his hatchet as on the previous
occasion, making every demonstration of the best disposition in the world
to bury it in the prisoner's brain. He was again arrested by the young
savages, who muttered something in his ear as before; and again the
effect was to convert his anger into merriment, the change being effected
with a facility that might well have amazed the prisoner, had his despair
permitted him to feel any lighter emotion. "Good!" cried the old warrior,
as if in reply to what the others had said; "Long-knife go Piankeshaw
nation,--make great sight for Piankeshaw!" And so saying, he began to
dance about, with many grimaces of visage and contortions of body, that
seemed to have a meaning for his comrades, who fetched a whoop of
admiration, though entirely inexplicable to the soldier. Then seizing the
latter by the arm, and setting him on his feet, the warrior led or
dragged him a little way down the hill, to a place on the road-side,
where the victors were assembled, deliberating doubtless upon the fate of
their prisoners.
They seemed to have suffered a considerable loss in the battle, twelve
being the whole number now to be seen; and most of these, judging from
the fillets of rags and bundles of green leaves tied about their limbs,
had been wounded, two of them to all appearance very severely, if not
mortally, for they lay upon the earth a little apart from the rest, in
whose motions they seemed to take no interest.
As Roland approached, he looked in vain amid the throng for his
kinswoman. Neither she nor Telie Doe was to be seen. But casting his eye
wildly around, it fell upon a little grove of trees not many yards off,
in which he could perceive the figures of horses, as well as of a tall
barbarian, who stood on its edge, as if keeping guard, wrapped,
notwithstanding the sultriness of the weather, in a blanket, from chin to
foot, while his head was as warmly invested in the ample folds of a huge
scarlet handkerchief. He stood like a statue, his arms folded on his
breast, and lost under the heavy festoons of the blanket; while his eyes
were fastened upon the group of Indians on the road-side, from which they
wandered only to glare a moment upon the haggard and despairing visage of
the soldier. In that copse, Roland doubted not, the savages had concealed
a hopeless and helpless captive, the being for whom he had struggled and
suffered so long and so vainly, the maid whose forebodings of evil had
been so soon and so dreadfully realised.
In the meanwhile, the Indians on the road-side began the business for
which they had assembled, that seemed to be, in the first place, the
division of spoils, consisting of the guns, horses, and clothes of the
dead, with sundry other articles, which, but for his unhappy condition,
Roland would have wondered to behold: for there were among them rolls of
cloth and calico, heaps of hawks'-bells and other Indian trinkets,
knives, pipes, powder and ball, and other such articles, even to a keg or
two of the fire-water, enough to stock an Indian trading-house. These,
wherever and however obtained, were distributed equally among the Indians
by a man of lighter skin than themselves,--a half-breed, as Roland
supposed,--who seemed to exercise some authority among them, though ever
deferring in all things to an old Indian of exceedingly fierce and malign
aspect, though wasted and withered into the semblance of a consumptive
wolf, who sat upon a stone, buried in gloomy abstraction, from which,
time by time, he awoke, to direct the dispersion of the valuables,
through the hands of his deputy, with exceeding great gravity and state.
The distribution being effected, and evidently to the satisfaction of all
present, the savages turned their looks upon the prisoner, eyeing him
with mingled triumph and exultation; and the old presiding officer, or
chief, as he seemed to be, shaking off his abstraction, got upon his feet
and made him a harangue, imitating therein the ancient Piankeshaw; though
with this difference, that, whereas the latter spoke entirely in his own
tongue, the former thought fit, among abundance of Indian phrases, to
introduce some that were sufficiently English to enable the soldier to
guess, at least, a part of his meaning. His oration, however, as far as
Roland could understand it, consisted chiefly in informing him that he
was a very great chief, who had killed abundance of white people, men,
women, and children, whose scalps had, for thirty years and more, been
hanging in the smoke of his Shawnee lodge,--that he was very brave, and
loved a white man's blood better than whisky, and that he never spared it
out of pity,--adding as the cause, and seeming well pleased that he could
boast a deficiency so well befitting a warrior, that he had "_no
heart_,"--his interior being framed of stone as hard as the flinty rock
under his feet. This exordium finished, he proceeded to bestow sundry
abusive epithets upon the prisoner, charging him with having put his
young men to a great deal of needless trouble, besides having killed
several; for which, he added, the Longknife ought to expect nothing
better than to have his face blacked and be burnt alive,--a hint that
produced a universal grunt of assent on the part of the auditors. Having
received this testimony of approbation, he resumed his discourse,
pursuing it for the space of ten minutes or more with considerable vigour
and eloquence; but as the whole speech consisted, like most other Indian
speeches, of the same things said over and over again, those same things
being scarce worth the trouble of utterance, we think it needless to say
anything further of it; except that, first, as it seemed to Roland, as
far as he could understand the broken expressions of the chief, he
delivered a furious tirade against the demon enemy of his race, the
bloody Jibbenainosay, the white man's War-Manito, whom he declared it was
his purpose to fight and kill, as soon as that destroyer should have the
courage to face him, the old Shawnee chief, like a human warrior,--and
that it inspired several others to get up and make speeches likewise. Of
all these the burden seemed to be the unpardonable crime of killing their
comrades, of which the young soldier had been guilty; and he judged by
the fury of their countenances, that they were only debating whether they
should put him to death on the spot, or carry him to their country to be
tortured.
The last speaker of all was the old Piankeshaw, whose meaning could be
only guessed at from his countenance and gestures, the one being as angry
and wo-begone as the latter were active and expressive. He pointed, at
least a dozen times over, to two fresh and gory scalps,--the most highly
valued trophies of victory,--that lay at the feet of the Shawnee chief,
as many times to the horses, and thrice as often at the person of Roland,
who stood now surveying his dark visage with a look of sullen despair,
now casting his eyes, with a gaze of inexpressible emotion, towards the
little copse, in which he still sought in vain a glimpse of his Edith.
But if the old warrior's finger was often bent towards these three
attractive objects, innumerable were the times it was pointed at the two
or three little whisky-kegs, which, not having been yet distributed, lay
untouched upon the grass. The words with which he accompanied these
expressive gestures seemed to produce a considerable effect upon all his
hearers, even upon the ancient chief; who, at the close of the oration,
giving a sign to one of his young men, the latter ran to the copse and in
an instant returned, bringing with him one of the horses, which the chief
immediately handed over, through his deputy, to the orator, and the
orator to one of the two young warriors, who seemed to be of his own
tribe. The chief then pointed to a keg of the fire-water, and this was
also given to the Piankeshaw, who received it with a grin of ecstacy,
embraced it, snuffed at its odoriferous contents, and then passed it in
like manner to his second follower. The chief made yet another signal,
and the deputy, taking Roland by the arm, and giving him a piercing,
perhaps even a pitying, look, delivered him likewise into the hands of
the Piankeshaw; who, as if his happiness were now complete, received him
with a yell of joy, that was caught up by his two companions, and finally
joined in by all the savages present.
This shout seemed to be the signal for the breaking up of the convention.
All rose to their feet, iterating and reiterating the savage cry, while
the Piankeshaw, clutching his prize, and slipping a noose around the
thong that bound his arms, endeavoured to drag him to the horse, on which
the young men had already secured the keg of liquor, and which they were
holding in readiness for the elder barbarian to mount.
At that conjecture, and while Roland was beginning to suspect that even
the wretched consolation of remaining in captivity by his kinswoman's
side was about to be denied him, and while the main body of savages were
obviously bidding farewell to the little band of Piankeshaws, some
shaking them by the hands, while others made game of the prisoner's
distress in sundry Indian ways, and all uttering yells expressive of
their different feelings, there appeared rushing from the copse, and
running among the barbarians, the damsel Telie Doe, who, not a little to
the surprise even of the ill-fated Roland himself, ran to his side,
caught the rope by which he was held, and endeavoured frantically to
snatch it from the hands of the Piankeshaw.
The act, for one of her peculiarly timorous spirit, was surprising
enough; but a great transformation seemed to have suddenly taken place in
her character, and even her appearance, which was less that of a feeble
woman engaged in a work of humanity, than of a tigress infuriated by the
approach of hunters against the lair of her sleeping young. She grasped
the cord with unexpected strength, and her eyes flashed fire as they
wandered around, until they met those of the supposed half-breed, to whom
she called with tones of the most vehement indignation,--"Oh, father,
father! what are you doing? You won't give him up to the murderers? You
promised, you promised--"
"Peace, fool!" interrupted the man thus addressed, taking her by the arm,
and endeavouring to jerk her from the prisoner; "away with you to your
place, and be silent."
"I will not, father;--I will not be silent, I will not away!" cried the
girl, resisting his efforts, and speaking with a voice that mingled the
bitterest reproach with imploring entreaty, "you are a white man, father,
and not an Indian; yes, father, you are _no_ Indian; and you promised no
harm should be done,--you did, father, you _did_ promise!"
"Away, gal, I tell you!" thundered the renegade parent; and he again
strove to drag her from the prisoner. But Telie, as if driven frantic by
the act, flung her arms round Roland's body, from which she was drawn
only by an effort of strength which her weak powers were unable to
resist. But even then she did not give over her purpose; but starting
from her father's arms, she ran screaming back to Roland, and would have
again clasped him in her own; when the renegade, driven to fury by her
opposition, arrested her with one hand, and with the other catching up a
knife that lay in the grass, he made as if, in his fit of passion, he
would have actually plunged it into her breast. His malevolent visage
and brutal threat awoke the terrors of the woman in her heart, and she
sank on her knees, crying-with a piercing voice, "Oh, father, don't kill
me! don't kill your own daughter!"
"Kill you, indeed!" muttered the outlaw, with a laugh of scorn; "even
Injuns don't kill their own children." And taking advantage of her
terror, he beckoned to the Piankeshaw, who, as well as all the other
Indians, seemed greatly astounded and scandalised at the indecorous
interference of a female in the affairs of warriors, to remove the
prisoner; which he did by immediately beginning to drag him down the
hill. The action was not unobserved by the girl, whose struggles to
escape from her father's arms, to pursue, as it seemed, after the
soldier, Roland could long see, while her wild and piteous cries were
still longer brought to his ears.
As for Roland himself, the words and actions of the girl,--though they
might have awakened suspicions, not before-experienced, of her good
faith, and even appeared to show that it was less to unlucky accident
than to foul conspiracy he owed his misfortunes,--did not, and could not,
banish the despair that absorbed his mind, to the exclusion of every
other feeling. He seemed even to himself to be in a dream the sport of an
incubus, that oppressed every faculty and energy of spirit, while yet
presenting the most dreadful phantasms to his imagination. His tongue had
lost its function; he strove several times to speak, but tongue and
spirit were alike paralysed. The nightmare oppressed mind and body
together.
It was in this unhappy condition, the result of overwrought, feelings and
intolerable bodily suffering, that he was led by his Piankeshaw masters
down the hill to the river, which they appeared to be about to pass;
whilst the chief body of marauders were left to seek another road from
the field of battle. Here the old warrior descended from his horse, and
leaving Roland in charge of the two juniors, stepped a little aside to a
place where was a ledge of rocks, in the face of which seemed to be the
entrance to a cavern, although carefully blocked up by masses of stone,
that had been but recently removed from its foot. The Piankeshaw, taking
post directly in front of the hole, began to utter many mournful
ejaculations, which were addressed to the insensate rock, or perhaps to
the equally insensate corpse of a comrade concealed within. He drew also
from a little pouch,--his medicine-bag,--divers bits of bone, wood, and
feathers, the most valued idols of his _fetich_, which he scattered about
the rock, singing the while, in a highly lugubrious tone, the praises of
the dead, and shedding tears that might have been supposed the
outpourings of genuine sorrow. But if sorrow it was that thus affected
the spirits of the warrior, as it seemed to have done on several previous
occasions, it proved to be as easily consolable as before, as the event
showed; for having finished his lamentations, and left the rock, he
advanced towards Roland, whom he threatened for the third time with his
knife; when one of the younger Indians muttering a few words of
remonstrance, and pointing at the same time to the keg of fire-water on
the horse's back, his grief and rage expired together in a haw-haw, ten
times more obstreperous and joyous than any he had indulged before. Then
mounting the horse, seemingly in the best humour in the world, and taking
the end of the cord by which Roland was bound, he rode into the water,
dragging the unfortunate prisoner along at his horse's heels; while the
younger Piankeshaws brought up the rear, ready to prevent resistance on
the soldier's part, should he prove in any degree refractory.
In this ignominious manner the unhappy Forrester passed the river, to do
which had, for twenty-four hours, been the chief object of his wishes.
The ford was wide, deep, and rocky, and the current strong, so that he
was several times swept from his feet, and being unable to rise would
have perished,--happy could he have thus escaped his tormentors--had not
the young warriors been nigh to give him assistance. Assistance, in such
cases, was indeed always rendered; but his embarrassments and perils only
afforded food for mirth to his savage attendants, who, at every fall and
dip in the tide, made the hills resound with their vociferous laughter.
It is only among children (we mean, of course, _bad_ ones) and savages,
who are but grown children, after all, that we find malice and mirth go
hand in hand,--the will to create misery and the power to see it invested
in ludicrous colours.
The river was at last crossed, and the bank being ascended, the three
warriors paused a moment to send their last greeting across to their
allies, who were seen climbing the hill, taking their own departure
from the battle-ground. Even Roland was stirred from his stupefaction,
as he beheld the train, some on foot, some on the captured horses,
winding up the narrow road to the hill-top. He looked among them for his
Edith, and saw her,--or fancied he saw her, for the distance was
considerable,--supported on one of the animals, grasped in the arms of a
tall savage, the guard of the grove, whose scarlet turban glittering in
the sunshine, and his ample white blanket flowing over the flanks of the
horse, made the most conspicuous objects in the train. But while he
looked, barbarian and captive vanished together behind the hill, for
they were at the head of the train. There remained a throng of footmen,
who paused an instant on the crest of the ridge to return the farewell
whoop of the three Piankeshaws. This being done, they likewise
disappeared; and the Piankeshaws, turning their faces towards the west,
dragging the prisoner after them, resumed their journey.